Here’s a rather odd sight from an American Airlines flight out of Georgetown, Guyana: a catering cart filled to the brim with Pizza Hut pizza. We’ve heard plenty of stories about pilots ordering pizzas for the plane after a flight gets diverted. But here the pizza boxes are actually loaded in the galley carts, for cabin crew to distribute on the flight!

American Airlines hasn’t added pizza to its standard menu. Instead on Georgetown – New York JFK flight diverted last Sunday. Normally this overnight flight only gets snacks in back. In fact American has taken ovens out of the coach galley, so can’t even heat food for economy passengers on this 2500 mile Boeing 737-800 flight.

However the planned snacks were used on the ground in Barbados while the plane waited to take off again, so they catered the flight from inside the terminal… Pizza Hut. A spokesperson tells me,

On Sunday, flight 2694 from Georgetown, Guyana (GEO) to JFK diverted to Bridgetown, Barbados (BGI) due to poor visibility at GEO. The packaged snacks main cabin customers would currently receive on this route were distributed during the delay. As American does not have a dedicated caterer at BGI, a local airport restaurant was used to cater the replacement aircraft for the BGI-JFK flight.

We apologize to our customers for the disruption to their flight and appreciate the efforts of our team members to ensure customers received a meal.

Nearly 10 years ago I catered an American Airlines Boeing 757 from inside the Seattle airport. It was a charter flight (“oneworld MegaDO”) and our aircraft went mechanical. All of the catering had been offloaded to make room for more alcohol (and because the original plan had been for everyone on the flight to get full business class meals, which took took long). There were packaged snacks for everyone at the at the gate, but with the delay and drinks on the ground we needed food.

We drank the plane dry during the delay and we raided the nearby aircraft. A tug was sent to the edge of the airport to go get more. I went into the terminal in search of food. First class got personal pizzas while I bribed the bagel shop to give us all their sandwiches (which meant they’d need to stay late to prep for the next day). The station manager pulled out his company credit card. American shows once again that it’s possible to cater a full aircraft on the spot from restaurants inside the airport!